Ubuntu Unity: Ugh
In April, Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal) shipped with a new window manager called Ubuntu Unity. I tried to like it, really I did! But it just kept getting in my way. The Launcher made it harder for me to figure out what applications were running, the Mac-esque disappearing Global Menus were painful when I had several windows side-by-side, and the Dash forced me to know in advance what program I was looking for (recall is harder than recognition). What worries me about disabling it outright is that the upcoming release of Ubuntu (Oneiric Ocelot) will apparently not offer the classic window manager at all. In the meantime, I made the following changes to have a workable and consistent environment.
Disable Ubuntu Unity
To revert to the classic look and feel, select “Ubuntu Classic” from the Session select box in the bottom panel before you enter your password to login. You’ll only need to do this once. If Ubuntu automatically logs you in, “Log Out” using the on/off button in the upper-right and follow the previous instructions.
How to avoid a new cellphone contract
Recently my 4 year-old cellphone broke in half. Thus I was faced with two choices:
- start a new two-year contract, costing more per month than my current plan, to get a basic, albeit heavily-rebated cellphone
- buy the cellphone for its full MSRP of around $160
I kind of think of these as “taxes”. Carrier lock-in on one hand, or price-gouging on the other. Both of which I wanted to avoid. The guy at the Sprint store suggested that I check around Craigslist and eBay for someone selling their old phone.
Sure enough, someone on eBay was selling a Samsung A840 for $10 + $7 shipping. It was used, yes, and there’s always a risk that someone is selling stolen phones (though I’m guessing that’s more a problem with iPhones and Blackberries), but the seller, Legacy Wireless, seemed reputable. So for a mere $17, I got a new phone (well, new to me) without having to start a new contract.
Sandal fail (or foot fail)
I’ve never been much of an open-toe footwear person. I like my socks. And I never learned how to walk in flip-flops. So it was with some anxiety that I recently decided to pick up my first pair of sandals after a visit to REI recently. I had been eyeing the Keens, but the guy there sold me on the indestructible Chacos. I ended up ordering a pair of 9 wides from Zappos because they had the color I preferred. Stephanie also picked up a pair, which I thought looked surprisingly elegant on her feet (for being so hardcore).
Well, we decided to put them to the test on what was supposed to be an eight mile hike around Tubbs Island, in the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday. Turns out part of the trail was closed, so we didn’t make it all the way around the island, but just getting down there and back we hiked about six and a half miles. In sandals.
What were we thinking?
We spent practically the whole time talking about how the sandals felt, adjusting the straps, picking little stones out from under our feet. Even though we could have waded through the “impassable” section of trail, we were happy to have an excuse to turn back because our feet hurt so much. By the time we made it to the car, I had three blisters on one foot and two on the other. Ouch.
Not sure what we’re supposed to take away from this experience…
- Sandals are not a replacement for good hiking shoes
- My pampered feet need to gradually work up to this
- Chacos are not a good match for my feet
- Sandals are not intended for long treks
Anyway, it kind of sucks, because I thought they looked pretty sweet. For sandals.
San Francisco pickpockets, a sketch
To the thieves who stole Stephanie‘s wallet and iPhone at the CAV Wine Bar and Kitchen on Friday night around 8pm:
WE KNOW WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE
My first thought as you saddled up to the bar next us while we ate our dinner was, “Hmm odd couple”. A white woman with dark blond hair, relatively tall, in her mid to late 30s, and a short black man, in his mid to late 50s. The woman was wearing a black jacket, and the man was wearing what can only be described as an over-sized khaki “zoot suit”. But whatever, it’s San Francisco right?
What bothered me was that the woman refused to sit down. The whole time she continued standing at the bar, in front of the chair talking to the bartender about who knows what. This struck me as so out of the ordinary that I actually mentioned it to Stephanie. I don’t remember them leaving, but by the time we were waiting for dessert to arrive, Stephanie reached down to her black sling bag that she’d had on the side of the chair and noticed both zippers were open.
Well, guys, thank you for ruining our night. We hope you are enjoying the $500 worth of groceries you purchased at Safeway with her cards. We also hope you’re entertained by the $40 worth DVDs you “rented” from the kiosk in Safeway that I’m guessing you have no plan to return. And we both sincerely hope that the $700 worth of clothing you purchased at Old Navy is keeping you warm at night. Most of all we appreciate the hassle you put us through, having to cancel her cards, get a new drivers license, and spend $250-500 on a new iPhone. Thank you, really, you shouldn’t have.
If anyone stumbles upon this pair casing other restaurants around town, please call the San Francisco Police Department (553-1141) and leave a message for officer C. Leung #12281, with regard to case #091094361. Thanks.
Update: Based on advice from a few people, I threw together a PDF flyer that I’m going to have printed and pass out to some of the bars and restaurants around the 1600 block of Market. If anyone wants a copy to download and print, please feel free.
Also, big thanks to NOTCOT, SFist, Eater SF, and Spots Unknown for helping spread the word!
Update, Oct 28, 2009: In case anyone found my sketch a little hard to decipher, Andy whipped up a more “photo-realistic” rendering:
Update, Mar 4, 2010: I got the following email today from a complete stranger:
A friend of mine was also ripped off by the couple you described in your blog. The male half of the duo (I’m about 90% positive) has been hanging out with the other crackheads for the last 24 hours in front of [Dalva on 16th street]. Little black dude sunken cheeks wearing a big yellowish zuit suitish outfit. He’s was wearing a gold 49ers jacket over it last I saw him.
Introducing Boing Boing Classic
This is what I believe. Design should be evolutionary, not revolutionary. Design should strive for simplicity and spurn complexity. Design should innovate, not emulate. Most importantly, design mistakes—that initial naivete of any fledging project—may eventually become its brand. Remember to embrace it! Look at Google. Craigslist. Coca Cola Classic.
With that in mind it was kind of shocking to see how Boing Boing, my favorite blog, redesigned their site this past week. They changed the logo (a throwback to the original print zine), they threw article callout boxes all over the place, they increased the font size, and they extended the homepage with unskimmable headline links. It seems, overall, they made a lot of design decisions that emulate the dying print world. I mean, c’mon, a masthead, really?
It’s not hard to explain my attachment to Boing Boing. For starters, it’s the only blog I still check directly, instead of plugging it into my feedreader. I probably go there multiple times a day, and just skim until I get down to posts I’ve already read. It was the first place I learned about Federated Media, a year before I started working there. It’s not because of the design (or legendary lack thereof) that I behave this way, I read it for the Boingers’ consistently stellar content and wit.
I decided I had to do something. I wanted my old Boing Boing back. I wanted Jackhammer Jill. I wanted a Boing Boing that was more Boing Boing than Boing Boing. One that Mark, Cory, Xeni, and David would be proud of. Boing Boing Classic. It was really that simple. So I registered boingboingclassic.net, grabbed the old layout and stylesheets from the Internet Archive, wrote a simple little feedparser+html generator, and voila. I give you:
Boing Boing Classic. Enjoy.
Update, Oct 12, 2009: I’ve stopped updating Boing Boing Classic so that my personal design criticism is not misconstrued by anyone as representing the opinions or attitudes of Federated Media, my employer and Boing Boing’s advertising partner.
AIG wants YOU to stop insurance fraud!
Straight outta the department of painful irony. Somehow this is still hanging at work. I’ve been tempted to tear it down.
The laughable poster text reads:
Stop insurance fraud because the real crime is that honest customers pay for it.
According to the General Accounting Office, insurance fraud costs American consumers over 100 billion dollars each year. Unfortunately, most of these costs are met by increases in premiums for honest customers. The AIG Fraud Investigation Division of American International Companies is an industry leader in fighting these costly crimes. We are helping ensure that those responsible are referred for criminal prosecution and civil action. Help us eradicate insurance fraud, and we will pay up to $50,000 reward if you help us catch em for information that leads to the arrest, prosecution, and conviction of anyone committing insurance fraud. Remember, it’s honest customers like you who end up paying for insurance fraud, so we’ve all got something to gain by preventing it. Please help us catch em, the people who are driving your insurance costs up.
1-866-CATCH-EM
1-866-228-2436
City entropy
To the asshole who smokes Pall Malls outside 1220 Pine St and then puts them out on our scooter seats so that the ember burns clear through the once-waterproof vinyl seat material, thus creating a hole for moisture to seep into the foam padding below:
I hope you die a slow, painful death due to lung cancer. Fuck You.
Total cost of living in the city today = $374.25
Or a cascading series of errors
Last night I had a platform release to help with, which begins at 7pm and takes about an hour. I don’t have much to do, but it helps for me to be on hand to deal with any problems that might crop up. It takes me about half an hour to walk home, and I got delayed leaving the office, so I wasn’t out the door until 6:20, which is cutting it pretty close. I figured I’d catch a cab (would be the 2nd time this week!) but every one was dark. Eventually I reached that point of no return (where taking a cab would just be silly), so I just hoofed it the whole way.
The side of the street where I usually park my scooter gets “street-cleaned” on Friday morning between 6 and 8, which means I have to remember to move the scooter to the other side when I get home from work on Thursday night. Then on Friday morning before I walk to work I have to move it back because our side of the street is a commute lane between 3 and 6 every weekday afternoon. This is a well-choreographed urban reparking ballet that I do EVERY WEEK.
Since I was racing home for the release, I didn’t have time to move my scooter across the street, so I made a mental note to ask my dear Stephanie to move it for me (or to do it myself later). Of course I promptly forgot all that after getting into things. Somehow I beat Stephanie home (she had an errand to run)—and even she noticed my scooter on the wrong side of the street, but by the time she made it in the apartment building and up the stairs, she completely forgot to mention it to me.
The release went well, but then we discovered an error in a config file that got pushed out to umpteen servers, so I was chasing down some lingering issues until after 10. Release nights don’t really feel like work, it’s mostly just hanging out online and watching the last 3 weeks of work go live. But it’s still work, so I stayed up a little bit later to compensate, to have some “me” time—which included listening to the Fresh Air program on Shepard Fairey and Mannie Garcia.
So this morning, I was in the shower, and my brain was totally chewing on something that annoyed me about what I’d heard on that program, and I was worried that if I didn’t write it down, I’d forget it all, so I started telling Stephanie the story to aid my own memory. Except this only got me more worked up. She left for work while I was still getting ready, and I figured I had a whole blog post worth of stuff to write. So I decided to take a little bit of time to get it out (I was up late working after all—I can show up a little later).
I pounded out this blog post on fair use, left a comment on another blog, and saw that it was around 10:15. As it takes me half an hour to walk in, 10:45 felt a little too late to show up, so I decided to scoot. Whereupon I discovered my first ticket of the day: $50 for parking in a street cleaning zone. Grrr.
I got down to Folsom where I usually park, and everything had changed. There was a new block of motorcycle parking without meters that was completely full. The several blocks of motorcycle parking along Main were totally gone (while they build the new Temporary Transbay Terminal). And even the little secret free spot where I sometimes park was now painted red. There was no place to park, partly because I was showing up late, so I circled once or twice, and eventually found a promising free spot at the end of some parking meters where another motorcycle was parked. Safety in numbers, right?
Fast forward to tonight, I walked out to my scooter, at the corner of Harrison and Embarcadero, and IT WAS NOT THERE!!! FUCK. I parked in the least obvious commute lane there ever was. Oh, except for that sign right above my head that said no parking from 4-7pm ANY DAY! I walked 3 blocks to where Stephanie was waiting for me on her scooter and told her that my scooter had been towed. How could this happen on the same day I got a street cleaning ticket?! My helmet was in my scooter, so she couldn’t take me anywhere. Eventually I caught a cab ($10) to the impound lot on 7th and Harrison, while she went home to dig up my license plate number.
Cost to free my scooter: $244.25
Ticket for parking in commute lane: $70
Total scooter-related fines: $374.25
Living in San Francisco: Pricey
